SARATOGA SPRINGS -- There may be another parking garage springing up on city property in the coming years.

Saratoga Springs City Center Authority President Mark Baker unveiled the Authority's proposal for a more-than-500-space parking garage located east of the City Center.

The City Council approved the concept but took no official action.

Laying out figures that show 2012 is on track to be the most profitable and busiest year in the City Center's history, Baker said the center is becoming a victim of its own success as the shortage of parking becomes increasingly troublesome.

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He said with the current 188-space lot, visitors to the center are now "competing with local Saratogians, customers and employees for the limited parking near the facility."

The lot is city-owned, but the City Center is proposing a 20-year lease to build a garage.

The entire $6- to $9 million project would be funded by the City Center Authority through its own coffers -- not taxpayer money -- something Mayor Scott Johnson said is critical to making it a viable project.

"It's an innovative project," Johnson said Tuesday as he and the rest of the City Council committed their conceptual approval to the plan.

That, Baker said, was what the Authority needed to commit to exploring the project in more detail.

The garage would stand four stories above the current city-owned parking lot, but because of the steep embankment between it and the City Center, the lot would rise only two stories above Maple Avenue.

Driving from Broadway, a patron of the fee-based parking garage would be able to drive down Ellsworth Jones Place directly onto the third floor of the garage.

A skywalk is also proposed to connect the City Center to the garage.

Baker said he is hoping to get necessary approvals and start construction of the structure within the first quarter of 2013 and have it completed by 2014, but he said there are "a lot of details still to be hammered out."

The engineering, he explained, may be tricky because of the bedrock on one side of the lot and the soft soil of the former creek bed on the other. Similarly, he said cost per space is a moving target. In the Woodlawn Avenue parking garage, for example, he said it shifted from $19,000 per space to $12,000 per space, and variables like the skywalk make it unique.

Todd Shimkus, president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, as well as Todd Garafano of the Saratoga Convention and Tourism Bureau and Downtown Business Association board member Paul O'Donnell, joined Baker at the City Council meeting Tuesday to offer their support.

"The completion of this project would likely solve the city's long-standing (parking) needs for some time," Shimkus said.